Whether you're bullish on the prospects of autonomous driving or not, and no matter how imperfect the technology is, it has undoubtedly become a competitive hotspot in the automotive industry.
At a time when new forces continue to tell stories around autonomous driving, traditional car companies are also actively integrating resources from all sides and striving to gain a voice in this field.
As the first traditional car group to announce all in pure electric, Volkswagen has recently made new moves in the field of autonomous driving. According to the German "Manager Magazine" broke the news, Volkswagen Group intends to bid billions of euros to acquire Huawei's autonomous driving business unit. The report also said that the acquisition has been under negotiation for several months and has entered the price negotiation stage.
Reports from the German media
As soon as the news came out, it immediately caused heated discussion in the domestic media, some said that Huawei wanted to sell the "soul", some said that the public wanted to become a receiver, more exaggerated, and even said that Huawei had begun to interview employees to transfer jobs.
Domestic media coverage
In this regard, Volkswagen China and Huawei invariably gave the same response - "no comment", which undoubtedly further aroused people's curiosity.
Does Volkswagen really want to pocket Huawei's entire autonomous driving division? Or is it just a matter of seeking cooperation? At present, no one can say clearly, and we are not good at speculating, but it is certain that this matter is actively "invited" by the public, which is indeed relatively rare in recent years, after all, we have heard more, all Of which are Chinese companies integrating foreign assets, and very few foreign parties are "anti-customer-oriented".
However, from an objective point of view, the current automotive industry is in the initial stage of electrification and intelligent transformation, and any form of joint efforts is possible. What's more, in the process of transformation, Volkswagen and Huawei have encountered different degrees of obstacles.
The urgent needs of the masses
Let's start with Volkswagen.
It is estimated that no one will doubt their determination and strength to promote electrification. As early as 2016, Volkswagen proposed the concept of a pure electric exclusive platform, and launched the MEB platform and the I.D. series pure electric concept car. At the time, BEV was far less relevant and important around the world than it is today.
The Volkswagen I.D. pure electric concept car unveiled at the 2016 Guangzhou Auto Show
With the continuous improvement of bev popularity, Volkswagen's actions in this field are also getting bigger and bigger, the product variety is constantly enriched, the construction of new factories is non-stop, and the declaration of "stopping the sale of fuel vehicles" is also shouting more and more confidently, among all mainstream automobile groups, Volkswagen can be said to be the most radical one to promote electrification.
However, the enthusiastic public does not seem to have achieved satisfactory returns in the market. In 2021, volkswagen group BEV sales of about 453,000 units, although there is a nearly double growth from 2020, but compared with Tesla, a leading enterprise in the field (936,000 units sold in 2021), there is still a fairly obvious gap.
Volkswagen will sell a total of 453,000 BEVs worldwide in 2021, including more than 310,000 in the European market and only about 90,000 in the Chinese market.
In the Chinese market, the total sales of the five models of the Volkswagen ID. series are about 70,000 units, which does not meet the sales expectations of 80,000-100,000 vehicles in the series, and the total sales of all pure electric products are less than 93,000 units, which is only equivalent to the volume of any "Wei Xiaoli" (Weilai sold about 91,000 vehicles last year, Xiaopeng about 98,000 vehicles, and ideally about 90,000 vehicles), which is far from saicar group (BEV total sales of 611,000 units) and BYD Group (335,000 units).
The main reason for the poor performance of Volkswagen BEV in China is not that the design is not outstanding enough or the performance is not extreme enough, and the degree of intelligence is not high is the most fatal problem. At present, a variety of ID. series models on sale, although they are built with a pure electric exclusive architecture, the mechanical quality is relatively excellent, but the intelligent performance is under the mainstream level of the industry, not to mention how advanced the driving assistance function, even the car engine system is not better than some local fuel vehicles, giving people a feeling more like a "fuel car that has changed the energy mode".
Volkswagen ID.4 cockpit
Cockpit of a Chinese brand fuel vehicle
In the eyes of Chinese consumers, the importance of car intelligence continues to increase, some young consumers also believe that the level of car intelligence is more important than mechanical quality, although this is a completely wrong cognition, but in Tesla and many new forces car companies under the frequent "brainwashing", the concept of "software-defined car" will be accepted by more and more people.
Objectively speaking, the application of intelligent technology can indeed enhance the product charm of new cars, especially driving assistance technology, even if there are still many problems in the actual application, even if consumers do not need more advanced driving assistance, but this is undoubtedly a major trend in the development of the industry. In order to gain the initiative in the heavily inwardly involved automotive industry at this stage, it is more important to follow the trend than to find the right direction, even if it is as powerful as the public, it has to accept this reality.
Huawei's short-term woes
Let's talk about Huawei.
Since they announced their entry into the automotive industry, they have always adhered to the attitude of "not building cars, only helping car companies build good cars", so rational and far-sighted strategic vision, so that Huawei is different from a number of speculators in the same industry, and is generally optimistic about the outside world.
The degree of difficulty in building their own cars and helping others to build cars is not a level, the former can be achieved only through resource integration, even if it is brainlessly "buying, buying and buying"; while the latter needs to create new high-quality resources and programs, focusing on the technical foundation and uninterrupted research and development investment.
Huawei's great strength lies in the fact that as a technology company, it can create better technical resources than many traditional suppliers. Their automotive BU currently has a complete set of intelligent car solutions including three-in-one electric drive system, battery thermal management system, intelligent cockpit system, autonomous driving software and hardware, etc., including MDC 810, an intelligent driving computing platform with a production capacity of 400+ TOPS.
What is the concept of 400+TOPS computing power? Tesla's FSD HW 3.0 hash rate is only 144 TOPS, while NVIDIA's latest Orin is only 254 TOPS.
MDC810 platform is currently mounted on the Polar Fox Alpha S, during the Shanghai Auto Show last year, the Pole Fox Alpha S Huawei HI Edition conducted an automatic driving test, in the whole 36 kilometers of a total of 100 minutes of testing, the tester did not carry out a manual takeover, the system did not appear a failure.
I dare not say that the Polar Fox Alpha S is currently the best model for automatic driving performance, but the solution on it is what most OEMs are eager to get.
However, for a car to be successful in the market, it is not enough to have excellent technology.
Since its listing in April last year, The Extreme Fox Alpha S can still only achieve small-scale delivery; Xiaokang Group, which has also carried out in-depth cooperation with Huawei, has a cumulative sales volume of only more than 8,000 SF5 last year, and less than a year after listing, it was replaced by the new product Q&A M5; GAC and Changan, two powerful state-owned enterprises, are also Huawei's first partners, but the cooperative models have not yet been released.
That is to say, among all the models that Huawei has participated in building, only the M5 is currently in the world. From the perspective of the market, "Huawei car" must not be called successful at this stage, but clear-eyed people can see that this is not Huawei's own problem, and some cooperative enterprises are not strong enough, which is the crux of the problem.
Some time ago, Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, boldly said in an internal meeting that car companies cooperating with Huawei "want brands without brands, channels without channels, retail without retail, product design, experience and all aspects..."
Although these words are ugly and have pulled down the two high-quality companies of GAC and Changan, to a large extent, they have largely explained Huawei's biggest dilemma in the automotive field. Without a partner whose system is strong enough, even the most advanced technology will not help.
The likelihood of an acquisition is extremely low
In June last year, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, made a famous "soul theory" on cooperation with Huawei at the shareholders' meeting, believing that the overall solution of smart cars is the soul of a car company, and SAIC cannot do without a soul, so it refuses to cooperate with Huawei.
Now Volkswagen and SAIC opposite, they urgently need to inject a new soul, and Huawei, which has a soul, needs a strong partner, the two sides complement each other's advantages, each takes what they need, if you can achieve cooperation in a sense, it is indeed a match made in the automotive industry.
Cooperation is good, but it should not be a simple and crude form of "acquisition".
Volkswagen's size and strength are indeed beyond doubt, but they may not have such a big appetite to swallow Huawei's entire autonomous driving business unit.
Su Jing, Huawei's former head of intelligent driving products, revealed in an interview in April last year that Huawei was responsible for more than 2,000 people in charge of autonomous driving-related research and development, and the annual investment amount was about one billion US dollars, and it would maintain an annual growth of about 30%.
In this acquisition, Volkswagen's bid is only billions of euros, and it is extremely unlikely that Huawei's entire core team will be bought at such a price.
In addition, in Huawei's eyes, the first thing to consider in the automotive industry is not profit, rotating chairman Xu Zhijun once said, "the car from the sample to the market, the time period is very long, we do not consider the revenue and profitability of the car BU in the short term", he also said bluntly, "If the car BU is going to be profitable now, the most effective way is to close."
Huawei is a long-term investment in the automotive industry, they are committed to building, including digital cockpit module, intelligent driving module, battery management module including professional technology suppliers, according to Huawei's own definition, this model is called "full-stack intelligent car solution", condensed into a brand is Huawei Inside.
Through Huawei Inside, Huawei can theoretically cooperate with all car companies that enter the field of intelligent cars and become "Bosch" or "BorgWarner" in the field of electrification, which is a business that requires deep accumulation and long-term layout. Now that the grand goal has been set, it would be a pity to be defeated by a phased setback or compromise to short-term interests.
Text | superman
(This article is the author's personal opinion only and does not represent the position of DearAuto.) )
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Mr. Li Guoyong of Guangdong Green Law Firm